The Heart of the Empire

by Philip McCutchan

  “So what do we do now, Major?”

  “Carry on advancing, but with extreme caution until dark. Obviously, I don’t want to be seen if I can avoid it — but at the same time I don’t want to give the impression, if we are seen, that we’re sneaking in — d’you follow?”

  Ogilvie nodded. “I follow, Major. We still may need to be joining up from Prinsloo’s commandos!”

  “Correct. Well then — on we go!”

  They moved forward. Ogilvie was conscious of a looseness in his stomach again: the time for parley, a very tricky parley, was possibly close at hand now. He looked ahead at the great dumps of mine tailings, so slowly growing in his vision, great heaps of blue-grey as the sun went down; through field-glasses he looked with fascination at the curious crow’s-nest on its square support at the top of the De Beers’ mine shaft — the crow’s-nest that formed the headquarters of Colonel Kekewich of the 1st Loyal North Lancashires, commanding the Kimberley defence. At dusk they began to raise the low ridges that Allenby had mentioned earlier, and the Major once again called a halt.

  “Now we wait for full dark,” he said.

  “And then?”

  “We go ahead dismounted, but leading the ponies in. We’ll reconnoitre, try to find a gap in the siege line.”

  “And go straight through it?”

  Allenby nodded. “That’s the idea. We’ll head for one of the perimeter strongpoints — and hope to reach it before we’re shot down.” He studied Ogilvie’s face. “It’s going to be touch and go, I’ll not deny. But this isn’t your first experience of breaking through enemy lines — is it, my dear fellow?”

  “No. Don’t worry about me, Major.”

  “I won’t. A good effort, then.” A smile spread across Allenby’s face. “I dare say the lady’s worth it to you, even if K isn’t!”

  *

  Allenby was imprecise as to the distance they would find between the siege line and the defence perimeter of the diamond town: it would depend, he said, on just where they found that gap, if ever they did. “It should be something between say two and four miles,” he said as they lay flat on the veld. “We’ll probably, from here, come down on them in the region of Carter’s Ridge, more or less. That’s about four miles from the perimeter. We’ll avoid the actual ridge, of course — it’s a Boer stronghold. I’ll aim probably to the north of it — avoiding the railway line, you see. I believe the main Boer strength is to the south of the town, from Carter’s Ridge through Wimbledon and the railway line to Aban’s Dam.” Already he had shown Ogilvie his map of the area, and Ogilvie had a fair picture in his mind. “I rather think — ” Allenby broke off as a shaft of light beamed out from ahead, sweeping the countryside. “See — the first of the searchlights from the defences. Good for Kimberley, less good for us, but that can’t be helped. Well — it’s time to go. Are you ready?”

  “All ready,” Ogilvie said. They got to their feet and, leading the ponies, headed for the Boer lines. Ogilvie was thinking a good deal of Katharine Gilmour: he wanted to do his best for her, his best as a man for a woman’s wish, but he felt that with the involvement of Lord Kitchener the Red Daniel had now become more an instrument of war and strategy than a young woman’s security in a changing world; and he would not stand by and see Katharine’s hopes perish in a trap of deceit, to become another casualty of war and of a kind of treachery to a girl’s trustfulness.

  5

  CAUTIOUSLY, THEY MOVED AHEAD OVER SCRUBBY GRASS and patches of bare earth, skirting round to the north. The searchlights did not, as yet, bother them: the probing beams were directed only onto the area between Kimberley’s defences and the inner circle of the siege line confronting the perimeter. Moving on, Allenby and Ogilvie soon made out the camp-fires of the enemy in the distance, saw the movement of men outlined against the glow.

  “More to the north yet, I fancy,” Allenby said, after a look through his field-glasses. “You see where the camp-fires end? There’s a gap there, I believe. When we’re abreast of it, we’ll reconnoitre inwards and see what we find.” He put a hand on Ogilvie’s shoulder. “I’ve a feeling we’re going to be lucky!”

  On slowly, walking the ponies in. They heard the snick of rifle bolts from time to time; sometimes snatches of song came to them, song roared out by rough voices. After a while they began to come into line with the ending of the camp-fires, and Allenby turned to the east shortly after they had passed the last of them.

  “Just for a preliminary look,” he said. He brought up his field-glasses again, but made no comment. Some three hundred yards closer in, he halted for another examination of the siege line. He nodded, as if pleased with continuing luck. For his part Ogilvie felt that luck was too good to hold; he advanced beside Allenby with a tingling spine, advanced into darkness and silence. The singing, away to their right once they had turned, had stopped.

  The searchlights, the only apparent sign of life now, were going on with their sweeps. Ogilvie cursed those probing beams of brilliance: they were going to endanger their lives the moment they broke out across No Man’s Land on the ponies. They would become targets for the practice of Boer and British alike. Allenby had told him they were expected by the Kimberley defence, that all strongpoints and sentries would have been warned; but Ogilvie, knowing well the propensity of even seasoned troops to fire at shadows, had little confidence that the irregulars who formed a large part of the defence of the town would hold their fire when they saw what could be the spearhead of a night attack. When he had mentioned this, Allenby had replied, tritely enough but with asperity, that risks must be taken in war …

  “We’ve chosen the place well enough,” Allenby said suddenly a moment later. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a gap of around half a mile — take a look for yourself.” He handed his glasses over. “Bare ground, and empty. Well?”

  “You’re right, Major. What I don’t understand is — ”

  “Why they leave a gap? I told you — manpower shortage! They’re forced to choose … but it’ll be well covered by artillery, you may be sure!”

  “And we run the gauntlet?”

  “Correct, we do. But, given luck, Ogilvie, we’ll be too fast for ‘em. Now listen carefully.” He took back the field-glasses and stowed them in their leather case, slung around his neck. Ogilvie shivered in a chilly wind that suddenly came to ruffle the long grass. “There may well be isolated men posted on watch in that space, and nicely hidden. I don’t suppose for a moment we’re going to have an easy run. Keep a very sharp look-out, and fire to kill the moment you see any movement. Keep well down on your pony’s neck if you can — reduce the target. When I give the word, we ride. We ride like the wind, straight through that gap and into No Man’s Land. Don’t keep to a dead straight line after we’re through — keep zig-zagging. Follow my movements. There’s a heap of those mine tailings — over there, where the searchlight’s just starting to sweep from now. D’you see where I mean?”

  “Yes … a little to the north of us — ”

  “That’s right. That’s the direction I shall head in. It’s about the closest point we shall find — between two and three miles.” Allenby looked closely at Ogilvie’s face, peering through the thick darkness. There was, fortunately, no moon. “A long ride I’ll grant you, but we’re going to make it. We have surprise in our favour, and I repeat, we’re expected by Kekewich’s sentries. Are you ready?”

  Ogilvie took a deep breath, and nodded. “I’m ready, Major.”

  Allenby reached out a hand. “The best of luck,” he said quietly. “Now — mount.”

  They mounted the ponies.

  “Ride!”

  Ogilvie pressed his heels to the pony’s side, riding fast into the wind close behind Allenby, heading down into the siege ring’s gap, expecting to be mangled in a hail of bullets if not a concentration of Boer artillery. The very fact of being mounted on a pony instead of a horse was in itself a frustration: their jogging progress was surely lethally slow and foolish! But they appeared to bo
unce on unseen and unheard, miraculously. Surprise was working, not for the first time in the history of war. They swept down between two gentle inclines, one of them topped by a deserted, shell-shattered building — a farm probably. Ogilvie saw, briefly, the torn walls and the gaping holes where windows had been. He saw this in the swathe of one of the busy searchlights as it moved for a moment beyond its customary range, and then, by another miracle, moved away in the other direction leaving the mounted officers to the safe shroud of the night.

  They came, still unseen, to the edge of No Man’s Land. Away to their right they saw the glow of the camp-fires: more of them to the left, on the far side of rising ground. Along the siege line, more shattered buildings showed up in the searchlight beams. They could see no men, no sentries, though they knew that not all the Boers would be sleeping. Allenby rode on furiously for the defence perimeter, with Ogilvie following. They had covered some five or six hundred yards by Ogilvie’s estimate when he heard the shout from the Boer lines behind, and then a moment later the firing started. The British searchlights had been far from kind: the two riders had been silhouetted, briefly but for long enough.

  Ahead of Ogilvie, as bullets smacked into the ground behind his pony, Allenby swung hard to his right. Now the searchlights were co-operative: they sent their beams farther, playing down onto the Boer line, blinding the riflemen, leaving the two Britons to ride on into thick darkness. Soon after, as Allenby continued zig-zagging towards the Kimberley perimeter, a long ripple of fire, sudden pinpoints of light, crackled from ahead. Looking dangerously over his shoulder for the likely target, Ogilvie saw a party of Boers, who had ridden out in pursuit, highlighted in the garrison searchlights: as the British bullets struck, men and ponies fell. Allenby and Ogilvie rode on, heels digging hard into the ponies’ flanks. They had not much farther to go before they saw the British troops riding out to bring them in, and heard the shouted order for them to halt.

  They brought up the ponies in a lather of sweat. A voice called: “Who goes there?”

  “Friend.”

  “Advance and be recognised.”

  Allenby walked his pony ahead. The officer commanding the mounted troopers, men of the Kimberley Light Horse, came on to meet him.

  “Major Allenby, and Captain Ogilvie of the 114th Highlanders, at your service.” Allenby paused, looked round as Ogilvie came forward to join him. “We wish to see Colonel Kekewich as soon as possible.”

  *

  The immense shadow of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, casting itself down from Egypt in the north, quite clearly lay over that night’s events in Kimberley: Colonel Kekewich was present in person at his crow’s-nest H.Q. on the De Beers’ inclined shaft, and this was where the two officers were taken while the British and Boers exchanged more shots 160 feet below in No Man’s Land. Kekewich, who had himself proclaimed Kimberley in a state of siege almost six weeks earlier on 14th October, stared at Ogilvie with a touch of superciliousness: he was a man of supercilious aspect, a man with a round, somewhat pink face beneath a high-domed forehead and a balding head, and a thin moustache that drooped like a Chinaman’s around the corners of his mouth.

  He said, “One of K’s young men, one gathers — h’m?”

  “So I’m told, sir.”

  “H’m. Well, you were damned lucky to get through, both of you! Anyway, now you’ve reached us; Captain Ogilvie, we’ll waste no time, no time at all.” Kekewich transferred his cool stare to Allenby. “Major, I think your part in this affair is done now — what?”

  “It seems so, sir.”

  “I understand you left General French advancing upon Naauwpoort. One presumes he is still doing so — no damn reports seem to have reached me! In any case you’ll have to remain here in Kimberley, Major Allenby.”

  “Sir, I — ”

  “You’ll have to do as I say, my dear fellow. I’m sorry, but there it is. You’d not break through the siege line on your own, and I can’t spare any men as an escort — they’d be cut to pieces and so would you. I need every man I can lay my hands on, and that includes you — you’ll be invaluable. Kindly make yourself comfortable in the headquarters mess — I’ll send an officer with you. My adjutant will make the necessary provision for you.”

  “Very good, sir.” Allenby saluted Colonel Kekewich and turned to Ogilvie, holding out his hand, which Ogilvie took warmly. “Goodbye for now, Ogilvie. You may be thinking all the instruction in Boer history and so on was wasted after all. Let me assure you it won’t be — in the future. I’ll say no more,” he added as a staff officer came forward to take him, at Kekewich’s bidding, to the mess. “Those further orders you were so anxious to hear … I’ve no doubt Colonel Kekewich will satisfy your curiosity shortly.”

  When Allenby had left with the staff captain, Kekewich moved across to an observation window and stood for a few moments looking down broodingly on the perimeter, on the strongpoints linked with barbed-wire fences, on the strategically sited abattis, on the searchlights still keeping up their nightlong vigilance against the Boer siege ring. Then he swung round on Ogilvie.

  “Strange times,” he said. “Strange times, when a bunch of farmers can block in our British infantry and cavalry!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And strange men too, my dear fellow.” Kekewich gave a sudden laugh, a sound of no humour. “You’re about to meet a pretty strange one yourself!”

  “Sir?”

  “Perhaps strange is not quite the word. Tiresome — troublesome — bloody nuisance half the time, though he’s done some good. I’m speaking of Mr Rhodes, Mr Cecil Rhodes.”

  “Rhodes! He’s concerned in this, sir?”

  Kekewich raised an eyebrow. “This? You mean Kitchener’s proposals?”

  “Yes, sir — though I don’t yet know precisely what those proposals are — ”

  “Then Rhodes will tell you, Ogilvie, Rhodes himself will tell you, for it’s partly his scheme. I shall take you to him presently. In the meantime, I shall tell you something about him, and I shall not disguise the fact that we don’t see eye to eye. Mr Rhodes is not a soldier, though he is a brave man — I’ll not deny that. He has been pestering me constantly, insisting I demand a relief force. He is constantly sending his own messages direct to Lord Milner in Cape Town, urging the sending of a relief force. He has even telegraphed to the De Beers office in Cape Town telling them to cable Lord Rothschild in London — urging Rothschild, who is also no soldier, to bully the Cabinet into arranging immediate relief — as though a military campaign were to be run by damn businessmen with minutes and an agenda and a show of hands! Why, Rhodes has even had his own heliograph made here in Kimberley so that he has his own means of communication with the outside world — and damn it, Ogilvie, his system bears more damn traffic than mine! Half of it’s share dealing, I’ll be bound!” Kekewich simmered gently for a moment, then said, “Now the good — I’m a fair man, I hope! Rhodes has put all the resources of De Beers at our disposal … he’s even provided rifles, 450 of them. He’s got his engineer, an American named Labram, to start building a big gun. They’re going to call it Long Cecil. You see the searchlights?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Kekewich swept his arm down towards No Man’s Land. “Rhodes’s Eyes. He provided ‘em! He’s given us Company’s water, when the pipes to the reservoir were cut, allowed the women and children to take shelter in the mine tunnels during bombardments. Oh, he’s a patriot, I’ll grant! But with an amazing ability to infuriate! A man who has been very great, Ogilvie, and believes himself still to be so, when in fact his prestige is much declined today. All this you must remember in your dealings with him — I think it’s important to understand the man, and also to have some appreciation of the position … my position vis-à-vis Mr Cecil Rhodes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kekewich said gloomily, “It’s possible he may restore his greatness, I suppose — his prestige, at any rate — as a result of the current Kitchener proposals. I don’t know. I know only this
: he and K will make the strangest bedfellows!” He shook his head. “Too alike in many ways. One is bound to kick the other out of any bed they find themselves sharing!” He banged a bell on a trestle table and another staff officer entered. “Ah, Phillips. Kindly telephone to Mr Rhodes. Tell him I propose calling upon him in fifteen minutes’ time, with Captain Ogilvie.”

  *

  Kimberley, silent in the night but obviously alive in its watchtowers and strongholds, Kimberley under siege and waiting hour by hour for a Boer attack, Kimberley and its wealth of diamonds and its Cecil Rhodes, its heartbeats provided by the men of Empire: Royal Garrison Artillery, a detachment of the Loyal North Lancs — just 500 regular soldiers out of 4000 men under arms; volunteers of the Diamond Fields Horse, the Kimberley Regiment, the Kimberley Light Horse and the Town Guard to defend a total of 13,000 Europeans, 7000 coloured and between 20,000 and 30,000 Bantu mine labourers. Riding through the streets with Colonel Kekewich, Ogilvie found the town surprisingly peaceful, a place largely of trees and gardens — put there, Kekewich told him, by Mr Rhodes.

  “A man of vision — so they say! He’s made himself a very great deal of money at all events. In a sense, this town of Kimberley will be his monument.”

  The meeting place with Mr Rhodes was to be in the Sanatarium Hotel. Riding on through those quiet streets, past residences and business premises, bungalows of wooden construction, more imposing buildings of stone, past occasional squads of marching soldiers, Ogilvie was encountering for the first time in his career, that curious existence, that state of being under siege, of being cut right off from the world, on one’s own territory yet held in isolation at the mercy of the enemy. But those few marching men, troops proceeding from their barracks and quarters to the relief of their comrades at the perimeter defences, were the only signs of war apart from the continually sweeping searchlights, those Rhodes’s Eyes ever vigilant. Ogilvie was conscious also of a sense of history, of a certain awe in the fact that he was about to meet the great Mr Rhodes, a man already a legend throughout the Empire. For almost a quarter of a century Cecil Rhodes had been the dominant personality on the imperial scene so far as South African politics were concerned. A former member of the Cape Assembly, acquisitor of Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, he was the man who had, three years earlier, ended the Matabele rebellion by going alone and unarmed into the very midst of the rebels to effect a so-far lasting peace; the man who, until the scandal of the Jameson Raid, had been Premier of Cape Colony.